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Image courtesy of Rob Robbins / National Science Foundation

Solving Polar Fossil Mysteries

The seafloor below Antarctic sea ice is covered with living things like molluscs and echinoderms. However, core samples from the layers of sediments below the surface contain very few fossils. Were there few animals living on the Antarctic sea floor in the geologic past? Or is it just difficult for fossils to form in polar environments so there isn't a record of them? From October until December 2008 a research team explored below the sea ice to get to the bottom of this mystery. Dr. Sally E. Walker sent in virtual postcards to Windows to the Universe describing her experience with this research.

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Fossils are evidence of ancient life preserved within sedimentary rocks. They are clues to what living things, ecosystems, and environments were like since life has existed on this planet. The oldest...more

What Will You Find There? South of the Antarctic Circle (at 66.5°S latitude) you will find the continent of Antarctica surrounded by the Southern Ocean, the geographic South Pole and the magnetic South...more

After spending almost three months in nature’s most silent and frozen landscape, nothing was more startling that the sound of gurgling water. At first I did not recognize the sound, so used to the Antarctic...more

Herbertson Glacier is my favorite place we have visited here. Up until the trip to Herbertson, I kept myself busy in the lab, weighing and measuring carbonate minerals for my experiments, so I did not...more

At last, the entire research team is at New Harbor, and everyone is busy constructing sediment samplers, testing sediment corers and retooling them, and making experiments to be put on the sea floor before...more

I cannot believe the astounding beauty and unusual diversity of underwater creatures in Antarctica. Some of the incredible sea animals that Shawn Harper photographed are shown in the postcard. Giant...more